🔥 Beyond Personal Identity – Selfless Heroes

Our identity guides the choices we make in life. The current cultural recipe is deciding to do things we’re good at, that match our personality, or that feel fulfilling and make us successful—like helping others or making money—and say it’s what God wants. But that’s not always true! Identity is usually a basis to make decisions based on human wisdom, without conversations with our Father. Identity is not direction. Ideally, our identity in Christ as sons is a basis to ascend to the Council and get direction.

There are three basic levels of identity; they form a progression to sonship. We all spend time in 1 and 2. A Kingdom door is open for sons in Father’s Council: conversations, living words, and greater works.

Take up your cross – Christianity is not Buddhism where we try to stamp out any remnant of self. God created us in His image and called us to be heroic. He created us in Christ for good works. He even promised to make our name great (Gen 12:2). Yet, there is still this paradox in sonship from Mt 16:25:

If you try to save your life, identity, or self, you will lose it.
If you lose your life, identity, and self for His sake, you will find it.

Here’s the key to sonship, Father has given believers the choice. We can choose to lay down our self-life and see what He has and pick it up again on the other side of His purpose. Sons choose to put the Kingdom first. We realize the universe doesn’t revolve around our personal agenda, identity, or happiness. Kingdom is more important, more exciting, and better than my identity wish list.

Jn 10:17 – The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again.
18) No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.
I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.
This command I received from my Father.”

What about my dream? – The concept of identity is that I see my value (you should, we’re fearfully and wonderfully made). The second phase of a healthy self-concept is that I have a dream for my future. I have goals and aspirations; plans on how to reach my happy place. Ego and Identity are the same thing!

Father also has plans and aspirations. He designed your personality to dreams he has already written in your heart. The real question is, who’s making the choices? Your identity is a basis for making all the decisions in your life apart from God. We can choose to do what we’re good at, what fits our personality profile, what our ministry is, what is fulfilling, what is fruitful in terms of blessing others or increasing our cash flow… and call that the will of God. The problem is it’s not!

Sons have conversations – What Father is doing that we can do with Him isn’t necessarily convenient, fun, or fulfilling. It can be a cross; it can be warfare; it can be a wilderness. It can be walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It can also change in ways we can’t predict.

The conversations we have in Father’s Council become the most important part of our identity as sons. Everything else comes second. As a son I can do all things through Christ because I’ve had the conversations. Father has revealed His strategy, and I know today’s part of my role. Tomorrow I will get another part. We’re co-laboring. My new value is making room for His part. My new identity as a son is releasing what Father can do, often it’s through me. Sons are the gates and doors of Psalm 24.

Ps 24:7 – Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.

Discipling Sons – The ramifications of sonship in business are very profound. We can graduate believers out of self, ego, and out of the religious spirit into conversations with their Father. In the second stage they can follow us as we follow Christ; we can even hold them accountable for what they do. But that’s not the ultimate goal.

The real graduation to sonship is learning to hear ourselves and co-labor with Father. That’s the well-spring of self-motivation where:

We trade servanthood and accountability for excellence and initiative,
We trade obedience and stewardship for ownership and multiplication,
We trade dead works that originate with ego for greater works that originate with Father,
We trade making widgets in business for Ecclesia and building God’s Kingdom.

Making decisions – Sons do what Father is doing because they are Seers and Doers. We don’t make decisions based on a spiritual identity tied to the religious spirit, neither by what our eyes see or by what our ears ear (human wisdom). Conversations in the Council replace all that! Conversations that include the 7 Spirits!

Isa 11:2 – The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
3) and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.
– He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
– or decide by what he hears with his ears;

Now sons can discern the difference between things of man (my ego and identity) vs. the things of God, co-laboring with what he is doing (see Mt 16:23, Rom 8:5-8).

- My Identity – Direction that needs self-discipline and affirmations to stay within my aspirations.
- Co-laboring – Direction that flows from the Council that feels like co-laboring with my Father.

Mt 16:23 – Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me.
For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

Identity (my ego) is the last hiding place for the spirit of religion.

Gen 2:25 – And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Gen 3:6 – and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree
was to be desired to make one wise (Independent and egocentric)
Gen 3:10 – “I heard the sound of you in the garden,
and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

The inspiration for this blog came from my own council sessions: These are insight-full examples that might be better than the blog, with links to help you do the same.

- 2024-08-11 Council – Identity is Not the Goal
- 2024-08-14 Council – Laying Down Identity and Ego
- Hand-out PDF version for study, printing

We help Kingdom Businesses find and fulfill their unique purpose while producing value and cash flow. We integrate Father’s Courts, Council, Purpose and Passion for Business leaders in a 1-on-1 format.
Axiom – Have fun, make money, love people, and build the Kingdom!

Get on our mailing list with a free copy of Intentional Reformation.
Get on John’s calendar for a Zoom conversation.
1. We start with a Purpose Profile to get your Kingdom purpose in writing.
2. Have DIY options and a fleet of coaches with different specialties to choose from.
3. We’re partnering with Larry Nault at BuildingaKingdomCompany.com.

Cutting Room Floor

Personal identity – carnal appetites, self

self-awareness, self-discipline, self-help, self-concept, self-care, self-love, self-actualization, self-esteem, self-control, self-fulfillment, self-discovery, self-examination, self-assessments, etc.

Christian Identity – WWJD, the spirit of religion (Human Wisdom)

Following the theology, principles, rules, values, accountability, affirmations, aspirations, and guru’s we perceive to be correct, without hearing Father’s voice ourselves.

Sonship & Kingdom – Conversations, living words, and greater works.

Co-laboring from the Council. We’re ascending and having conversations that include the 7 Spirits. Our paradigm is knowing what’s in Father’s heart, what is He doing right now? As sons, we’re bring Father’s purpose and power to earth, Reformation of nations!

Phil 2:3 – Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,
4) not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
5)   In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6) Who, being in very nature God,
      did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7) rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8)   And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—
      even death on a cross!
9) Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,